In line with the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ or ‘Self-Reliant India Mission’, Centre for Automotive Energy MaterialsInternational Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials , an Autonomous R&D Centre of Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, under the Technical Research Centre on Alternative Energy Materials and Systems, has developed expertise in establishing Li-ion battery process know-how and its successful demonstration in electric scooters and solar street lamps. On November 25, 2021 ARCI and NsureReliable Power Solutions Ltd., Bengaluru conducted an agreement signing program for Technical Know-How Transfer and Training.
Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Governing Council, ARCImentioned that partnership between ARCI and Nsure Reliable Power Solutions is an important milestone to address challenges associated with climate change and carbon footprints. He emphasized the need of indigenous technology development for sustenance and highlighted the importance of partnership between R&D labs and Industries to take technologies to higher TRLs. He also stressed upon the need of competent human resource, multiple formats to leverage complementary resources of stakeholders in innovation ecosystem and government support for technology upscaling and commercialization and he said that ARCI-Nsure agreement can be role model on how such an ecosystem can be evolved in the country.
Dr. G. Sundararajan, former Director ARCI, emphasized that R&D labs like ARCI should look beyond lithium ion battery technology and develop technologies involving other alternative energy materials.
Dr. Tata Narasinga Rao, Director, ARCI stated thatthe cost of electrode materialscontributes significantly towards the overall cost of LiBs and as India is heavily dependent on import of these materials, it became essential to indigenously develop a technology and support industrial organizations in LIB technology.
Dr. R. Gopalan, Regional Director, ARCI-Chennai.,briefed about the efforts of DST and ARCI in setting up technical research centre on alternative energy materials in systems and especially the Li-ion battery technology for electric vehicles and energy storage solutions and said that this technical know-how transfer is a major miles store at ARCI towards “AtmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan”.
Dr. R. Prakash, Head, Centre for Automotive Energy Materials gave an overview of the Lithium-ion battery technology and work accomplished by ARCI at its Chennai Centre.
Dr. John Albert, CTO of NsureReliable Power Solutions, while briefing about the vision of, mentioned the need of industry- Academia relation to bridge the wide gap between the international and Indian scenario in the Li-ion cell manufacturing technology and in this context ARCI-Nsure partnership shall play a crucial role. CTO along with Mr. Chandrakanth and Mr. Suryakanth , Directors, as well as Mr. Ramachandra Business advisor graced the function.
Dr.S..K. Varshney and Dr. R.K. Joshi fromDST, Govt. of India congratulated ARCI for their consistent support to industry and conveyed their wishes for new partnership forged by ARCI in the area of LIB technology.
Dr. Sanjay Bhardwaj, Head, Technology Transfer, ARCI conducted the proceedings and Dr.T. Mohan, Senior Scientist, Centre for Automotive Energy Materials, ARCI proposed the vote of thanks.